{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":1634,"auction_id":3,"set_id":4,"lot_number":"5","artist":"Betsy Westendorp (1927 - 2022)","title":"Casa de Manila","starting_price":340000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1965 (lower left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"21\" x 25 1/2\" (53 cm x 65 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Spain","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The barong-barong (shanty) was one of Betsy Westendorp's earliest themes in Manila. Westendorp first arrived in Manila in the early 1950s after marrying a Spanish-Filipino named Antonio Brias, whom she wedded in Madrid in 1951.
\nIn an interview with Cid Reyes for her 2021 retrospective at the Met, Westendorp shares: \"At that time [early fifties], we were living in Dakota Street at Ramona Apartments, in front of Assumption [Convent; corner Herran, now Padre Faura St.]. At five o'clock, my husband, Tony, came home from San Miguel. Their offices were near Malacañang, in Arlegui. He would pick me up and go to Manila Bay. Take a stroll…enjoy the view and the sunset.\"
\nIn the early 1950s, at the time of her arrival in the country, Westendorp did not immediately paint. \"No, I did not paint—I did not paint for many years,\" she told Reyes. The 1950s was a decade of rehabilitation from the devastation (both economically and morally) brought by the war. Upon Westendorp's arrival in Manila in the early '50s, she likely encountered rows of ramshackle shanties, which the war-torn people had built as makeshift houses due to the widespread deprivation and indigence in the post-war milieu.
\nReyes writes in the catalog for the retrospective: \"Since the Fifties, in the decade of her first arrival in the country, Betsy went out of her comfort zone to paint the barongbarong in—she still remembers the place—Pasong Tamo, when most of Makati was still grassland and open space, and not a skyscraper in sight.\"
\n\"I'll tell you what, before leaving the Philippines, before I started the portraits, I also started going to Pasong Tamo. At that time, Pasong Tamo was like…little huts and barong-barongs. I would go there to paint the barongbarongs,\" recalls Westendorp. \nBetsy and Antonio would eventually settle in their lovely abode in Forbes Park, Makati, where they were blessed with three beautiful daughters: Isabel, Sylvia, and Carmen.
\nOne can imagine Westendorp going out of her comfortable urban domain to explore the city's outskirts, where the urban poor dwell. There, she would observe with sensitivity and empathy the plight of the populace in the face of a rapidly changing country. Westendorp might have also mingled with the people.
\nWestendorp's depiction of the barong-barong is as realistic as can be; the house is not brought under excessive romanticization. In the face of post-war optimism, characterized by romantic visions of rising from the ashes of war and progress, Westendorp did not succumb to glossing over the subject, emphasizing actuality rather than the aesthetically pleasing.
\n\"In some of her works, one senses a subtle visual narrative at work, extending the interest of her visual images. A mother, crouched on her haunches, doing her laundry, very likely a day's work for a better-off neighbor, is a veritable portrait of hardy living and humble industry, while her little daughter at play is innocence incarnate. Often, a sampayan or clothesline is on view, strung with rows of colorful shirts, lending a spark of brilliance to an otherwise grey and gritty scene,\" writes Cid Reyes in his book Betsy Westendorp.
\nAs a new dweller among the people, Westendorp found empathy with the anguish-ridden populace. Westendorp's depiction of the barong-barong is not just a poignant scene; it is an artist's profound rumination of the destructive consequences of despotic conflict. We see Westendorp as a human imbued with penetrating empathy, endowing humanity and dignity to those who once hoped for abundance but instead experienced its adverse antithesis.
\nAs Cid Reyes writes: \"But what was put on the line was not her visual prowess but rather, her emotional intelligence. Indeed, this was what Westendorp had brought to bear on a subject which, to others, was so unsightly as to instantly avert their gaze…She has invested her barongbarong works with dignity and has regarded the subject with respect and, in fact, affection.\" (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Betsy Westendorp (1927 - 2022) Casa de Manila signed and dated 1965 (lower left) oil on canvas 21\" x 25 1/2\" (53 cm x 65 cm)